KEY POINTS:
Nobody was surprised at talk that Brent Impey might lead a management buyout, or at least seek a management stake, in a sale of TV3 owner CanWest MediaWorks New Zealand.
Impey and his team are a big part of CanWest's success, so any buyer will likely retain current
management.
A wily and tough negotiator - some say too tough - Impey has been at the helm at CanWest for seven years, overseeing five radio and two television networks. He aggregated radio assets and brands such as The Breeze and The Edge into the Auckland market and led a makeover at TV3 that has turned it into the channel of choice for urban liberals.
Now the Canadian parent, Winnipeg-based CanWest Global Communications, which has 70 per cent of CanWest New Zealand, is close to completing its review through Citigroup of South Pacific investments, and the CanWest Kiwi stable looks likely to change hands.
So are negotiations for a management buyout on the cards?
Impey says no - well, at least not now. Prospective buyers, including private equity companies, have been traipsing through the CanWest offices in Flower St, Newton, and running a ruler over the company.
"With the company in the process of a sale it is critical, absolutely critical, that management play with a straight bat," says Impey. "It may be that, as a lawyer, that is very important to me."
But, "Of course if there is a change and we get to a final bidder I am more than happy to sit down and talk to them."
Impey, a media lawyer who moonlighted for seven years as a Radio Pacific talkback host, brings a unique combination of skills to the chief executive job at NZX-listed CanWest.
He has always been "a radio guy' and says he has special understanding of his presenters "who put their neck on the line each day".
As a one-time host on the graveyard shift he knows the feeling of trying to excite talkback callers while the phones stay silent.
Impey says he is relaxed about the sale - he has already been through prospective sales in 2000 and 2002 and the IPO of a 30 per cent stake in July 2004.
CanWest New Zealand floated at $1.53 but after a brief rise slipped below float price. On speculation of a takeover it has been trading above $2 and yesterday closed at $2.12. Impey is disappointed by what he says is an undervaluing of the stock.
"People said they wanted more companies on the New Zealand Exchange and were happy to have a media company, but the share price is leaving us undervalued compared to Australia and open to takeovers."
The comment is surprising from a CEO focused on delivering results to shareholders.
But it is also telling. It reveals a deep-seated and acknowledged nationalism in the head of a company that is 70 per cent owned by Canadian investors.
Impey fell into broadcasting during his student days. While working as a lawyer he moonlighted on Radio Pacific from 1979 to 1986 and he was behind the decision to turn the station into the new talk radio network RadioLive in April 2005.
He will not give financial details of RadioLive but insists it's been breaking even and drawing 22 per cent more listeners than expected. CanWest started RadioLive partly to increase content for the new digital era - which Impey stresses is not a replacement for the major part of the business - and to put consumers in front of content.
He acknowledges that RadioLive has a tough job overcoming the talk-radio dominance of The Radio Network's Newstalk ZB, its commercial rival, half owned by APN News and Media, publisher of the Herald.
"Newstalk is a tough brand to break down - it is strong in Auckland Wellington and Christchurch - but it is less so in provincial areas," he said.
The other big radio initiative has been the introduction into Auckland of easy-listening station The Breeze, tied in an unusual deal for the Kiwi FM station to use a valuable Government-owned Auckland frequency.
On the face of it, the Kiwi move, in which it was turned into a trust, does not help CanWest's commercial status. But such is Impey's reputation as a canny negotiator the radio industry has been riven with speculation there will be a commercial payoff.
The decision caused a rift between CanWest and TRN, leading one business colleague to conclude: "Brent is a brilliant negotiator - he is tough - maybe too tough in that he does not leave room for people to come out of negotiations with something in their hand."
Impey insists he does not have a "winner takes all" approach.
"In a country of this size you are going to be dealing with people again and again. I believe in leaving something on the table.
"I do react. I'm tough, I suppose, if I feel I have been pushed into a corner that I perceive and the other side is taking an unreasonable position. Yes, I'll be tough then."
Surprisingly, given his reputation for being focused on the bottom line, Impey's biggest successes have been not in advertising revenue but in cajoling politicians and bureaucrats. CanWest maintains generous indirect subsidies for programming and broadcasting policy as the industry is put under increased scrutiny by Government officials and agencies.
Impey is held in wary regard by politicians and industry bureaucrats.
"He is surprisingly successful," said one. "You know where he is coming from - he is about making money and finding a way he fits within the system, as opposed to the state organisations like TVNZ and Radio New Zealand who are arguing about social and cultural obligations."
As legal counsel for the consortium that fought for years and spent millions in the 1980s for the licence to operate New Zealand's first privately owned TV station, Impey is a passionate advocate of the private sector and critic of state broadcasting and its role in advertising.
The consortium fought for years and spent millions for the right to run TV3 in 1989 only to be overtaken by a deregulation of broadcasting.
"TV3 was loaded with foreign-media and cross-media rules at a time after the slump, making it impossible to bring in new capital. I left my legal practice in 1989 disillusioned," he said.
He fought for privatisation of RNZ commercial stations - now owned by TRN - and has complained bitterly about cross-subsidisation of TVNZ.
It is history now that then Communications Minister Maurice Williamson removed media ownership controls to enable CanWest to buy TV3 after the original consortium failed.
The irony that he is now running the company does not escape Impey as he sits in his corner office at CanWest headquarters, a converted dairy factory in what is now a bohemian nook of the Auckland city fringe.
By many accounts there is more interest in radio than TV assets but Impey says he is confident.
"We have had doomsayers, but I argue that everything finds its place."
On that score he says the ad market is looking good after a slight slowing.
At first there seems little to link the direct, sometimes blunt chief executive Impey to TV3's effusive star John Campbell - until you realise that CanWest is built on the skills of both, who are broadcasters in two very different senses of the word.
Brent Impey
* Chief executive CanWest MediaWorks New Zealand.
* Former media lawyer and Radio Pacific talkback host.
* Age: 55
* Married with three children aged 22, 21 and 18.
* Lives in Auckland.
* Interests: Rugby, sport, boating, news and current affairs, politics.
